Dales Philosophy of Behavioral Choices: A Cognitive/Postmodern yet Ancient, Eastern Wabi Sabi approach to Life and Living.
“This is a Philosophy of Taking Personal Responsibility, Accepting Personal Ownership and Experiencing Personal Empowerment in and for our daily live and choices.” “One must become empowered to choose how they will respond to life’s challenge” “I believe this is the keys to an individual’s success; it a process of Education, Discovery, Creativity, Experimentation, Evaluation, Challenge, Acceptances, Application and Change.”
This Therapeutic Approach is often bases on Plato’s Educational Philosophy: Knowing One’s Self.
To learn is to discover ones true self; as this can happen as one learns to step outside them self and their own thinking and world view and are able to observer one’s self and how that person interacts in the world around them.
To “Know Thyself” means you must become conscious of your thoughts, your likes and dislikes, your prejudices, habits, memories, expectations, etc., because the more you understand yourself, the greater is your understanding of humanity as well.
To know yourself, you have to come to the place where you can risk seeing yourself objectively. The “you” that knows yourself cannot be the same as the “self” that you know. If you can’t do this, you will continue to behave and feeling the same you always have. Change is only truly possible as we are brave enough and willing to step outside our box.
As one learn to know and accept one’s self and developing world view, then one can understand and experience what makes you the same as the world around you (empathy) as well as different (uniqueness, creativity and spirituality) from, the other 7 billion people earth.
Plato the teacher used ‘Know Thyself’ extensively with Socrates as the key to knowledge. Plato makes it clear that Socrates is referring to a long-established wisdom. Socrates led a long inquiry as to how we may gain knowledge of ourselves.
In 1750 Benjamin Franklin, in his Poor Richard’s Almanac, Franklin observed the great difficulty of knowing one’s self; “There are three Things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond, and to Know One’s Self.”
I believe that the Scripture (Philippians 2:12 AMP) that talks about this when stating that one must work out their own salvation with awe (of the world around them and their creator/creative force) and trembling (a health balance of awe, self-distrust of motivations and a cautious reflection). This process may be scary but if willing the discovery is one of immense value to us and that can have an impact the world around us.
I Believe in a Wabi-Sabi Philosophy of Life: The learning and growing and healing through Wabi-Sabi reflection; This is the Art and Acceptances of our own Imperfections be they: trauma, mistakes, deformities, difficulties, challenges, obstacles and damage etc. within our lives. Not as a hindrance but through coming to terms with these things we can then choose to create our own Perfectly Imperfect, Beautiful Garden of Our Lives.
Within this Philosophy of Behavioral Choices, The Choice is and/or becomes YOURS to make; but you need not do it alone! The Question that must be asked is Will You Choose to stay where You Are or will You Embrace the Challenge and Your Associated Fears to Create Your Life Into That Perfectly Imperfect Garden?